Apollo is Helios, the Sun, Phoibos-Apollo, the “Light of Life and of the World,”[880] who arises out of the Golden-winged Cup (the Sun); hence he is the Sun-god par excellence. At the moment of his birth he asks for his bow to kill Python, the Demon Dragon, who attacked his mother before his birth,[881] and whom he is divinely commissioned to destroy—like Kârttikeya, who is born for the purpose of killing Târaka, the too holy and wise Demon. Apollo is born on a sidereal island called Asteria—the “golden star island,” the “earth which floats in the air,” which is the Hindû golden Hiranyapura; he is called the Pure (ἁγνὸς) Agnus Dei, the Indian Agni, as Dr. Kenealy thinks; and in the primal myth he is exempt “from all sensual love.”[882] He is, therefore, a Kumâra, like Kârttikeya, and as Indra was in his earlier life and biographies. Python, moreover, the “red Dragon,” connects Apollo with Michael, who fights the Apocalyptic Dragon, seeking to attack the woman in child-birth, as Python attacks Apollo's mother. Can any one fail to see the identity? Had the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, who prides himself on his Greek scholarship and understanding of the [pg 401] spirit of Homer's allegories, ever had a real inkling of the esoteric meaning of the Iliad and Odyssey, he would have understood St. John's Revelation, and even the Pentateuch, better than he does. For the way to the Bible lies through Hermes, Bel, and Homer, as the way to these is through the Hindû and Chaldæan religious symbols.
(3) The repetition of this archaic tradition is found in chapter xii of St. John's Revelation, and comes from the Babylonian legends, without the smallest doubt, though the Babylonian story, in its turn, had its origin in the allegories of the Âryans. The fragment read by the late George Smith is sufficient to disclose the source of this chapter of the Apocalypse. Here it is as given by the eminent Assyriologist:
Our ... fragment refers to the creation of mankind, called Adam, as [the man] in the Bible; he is made perfect, ... but afterwards he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal of Tiamat, the spirit of chaos, and offends against his god, who curses him, and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of humanity.[883]
This is followed by a war between the dragon and the powers of evil, or chaos on one side and the gods on the other.
The gods have weapons forged for them,[884] and Merodach [the Archangel Michael in Revelation] undertakes to lead the heavenly host against the dragon. The war, which is described with spirit, ends of course in the triumph of the principles of good.[885]
This War of the Gods with the Powers of the Deep, refers also, in its last and terrestrial application, to the struggle between the Âryan Adepts of the nascent Fifth Race and the Sorcerers of Atlantis, the Demons of the Deep, the Islanders surrounded with water who disappeared in the Deluge.
The symbols of the “Dragon” and “War in Heaven” have, as already stated, more than one significance; religious, astronomical and geological events being included in the one common allegory. But they had also a cosmological meaning. In India the Dragon story is repeated in one of its forms in the battles of Indra with Vritra. In the Vedas this Ahi-Vritra is referred to as the Demon of Drought, the [pg 402] terrible hot Wind. Indra is shown to be constantly at war with him; and with the help of his thunder and lightning the God compels Ahi-Vritra to pour down in rain on Earth, and then slays him. Hence, Indra is called the Vritra-han or the “Slayer of Vritra,” as Michael is called the Conqueror and “Slayer of the Dragon.” Both these “Enemies” are then the “Old Dragon” precipitated into the depths of the Earth, in this one sense.
The Avestaic Amshaspands are a Host with a leader like St. Michael over them, and seem identical with the legions of Heaven, to judge from the account in the Vendîdâd. Thus in Fargard xix, Zarathushtra is told by Ahura Mazda to “invoke the Amesha Spentas who rule over the seven Karshvares[886] of the Earth”;[887] which Karshvares in their seven applications refer equally to the seven Spheres of our Planetary Chain, to the seven Planets, the seven Heavens, etc., according to whether the sense is applied to a physical, supra-mundane, or simply a sidereal World. In the same Fargard, in his invocation against Angra Mainyu and his Host, Zarathushtra appeals to them in these words: “I invoke the seven bright Sravah with their sons and their flocks.”[888] The “Sravah”—a word which the Orientalists have given up as one “of unknown meaning”—means the same Amshaspands, but in their highest Occult meaning. The Sravah are the Noumenoi of the phenomenal Amshaspands, the Souls or Spirits of those manifested Powers; and “their sons and their flocks” refer to the Planetary Angels and their sidereal flocks of stars and constellations. “Amshaspand” is the exoteric term used in terrestrial combinations and affairs only. Zarathushtra addresses Ahura Mazda constantly as the “maker of the material world.” Ormazd is the father of our Earth (Spenta Ârmaiti), who is referred to, when personified, as “the fair daughter of Ahura Mazda,”[889] who is also the creator of the Tree (of Occult and Spiritual Knowledge and Wisdom) from which the mystic and mysterious Baresma is taken. But the Occult name of the bright God was never pronounced outside the temple.
Samael or Satan the seducing Serpent of Genesis, and one of the primeval Angels who rebelled, is the name of the “Red Dragon.” He [pg 403] is the Angel of Death, for the Talmud says that “the Angel of Death and Satan are the same.” He is killed by Michael, and once more killed by St. George, who also is a Dragon Slayer. But see the transformations of this. Samael is identical with the Simoom, the hot wind of the desert, or again with the Vedic Demon of Drought, as Vritra. “Simoon is called Atabutos” or—Diabolos, the Devil.
Typhon, or the Dragon Apophis—the Accuser in the Book of the Dead—is worsted by Horus, who pierces his opponent's head with a spear; and Typhon is the all-destroying wind of the desert, the rebellious element that throws everything into confusion. As Set, he is the darkness of night, the murderer of Osiris, who is the light of day and the Sun. Archæology demonstrates that Horus is identical with Anubis,[890] whose effigy was discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and a spear, like Michael and St. George. Anubis is also represented as slaying a Dragon, that has the head and tail of a serpent.[891]